Should You Consider Equity Release To Pay For Live-in Care?

Published on: 21 January 2021 Last Updated on: 24 December 2024

Although it seems like equity release plans have been around forever, this sector of finance has only been regulated since 2004. However, this has not dented their popularity among over 55s wishing to free up a sum of money rather than leaving it tied up in their property.

Many have used the money to fund home DIY projects, help a child onto the housing ladder, or simply for a blowout holiday or new car. Increasingly though many are seeing equity release as a good way to pay for care in their own home in old age. Equity is the value of your home minus any loans or mortgages secured against it which haven’t been fully paid off.

If you’re wondering whether this would be right for you read our advice on the advantages and pitfalls of equity release and how the equity in your home could pay for a comfortable old age.

What is Equity Release and How Does it Work?

This is a method for releasing some of the untapped wealth tied up in your home. Being able to unlock the value of your home and turn this into cash is a way to remain in a much-loved family home. There are two main types of equity release – a lifetime mortgage or a home reversion plan, which is the sale of part or all of the property.

A lifetime mortgage is a loan against the value of your home which is not repaid until either the homeowner dies or goes into long-term care, or the property is sold. If you decide to go down this route you must choose carefully between the two types of lifetime mortgage which are:

The interest roll-up mortgage, which is the most popular option. With this, you receive either a lump sum or regular amounts, and interest is added to the loan at a fixed or capped rate.
An interest-paying mortgage is similar to a standard mortgage in that you pay monthly or ad-hoc payments, and some plans allow you to pay off the capital, to reduce the sum owed at the end.

The home reversion plan is only available to those aged at least 65. With this, you can sell all or a percentage of your home to a provider at below the market value and you become a rent-free tenant in your home. You can even sell percentages of the home at off-set intervals.

Another, less well known and potentially more risky option is the sale and rent back scheme where you sell your home, at a discount and become a rent-paying tenant in your home.

Points to Consider

Home care services are increasingly seen as preferable to standard nursing home care for many reasons, not least among them being able to carry on living in your own home being looked after by a trusted live-in carer who becomes your friend.

Lifetime mortgages are considered the most popular option for equity release because it allows you to retain full ownership of your property and some come with an option of paying back some of the loans over time in order to reduce the build-up of interest and retain as much of the value of your property to benefit your estate when you die.

You can only apply for equity release once you are over 55 and the amount you receive is dependent upon the value of your home (minimum value £70,000) as well as your age. Your property must be in the UK.

Benefits of Equity Release

For today’s older homeowners who have seen the value of their homes rise significantly over recent years and with the added benefit of current low-interest rates, equity release gives you an amount of cash to spend now or to put towards a live-in care plan.

Risks and Pitfalls of Equity Release

The biggest problem with equity release is that you do not receive the full market value for your home, indeed the amount you can access would be much less than you would get by selling your home on the open market in the traditional way. Another disadvantage is that any inheritance your beneficiaries expect to receive would be reduced.

The upfront costs and fees involved in setting up an equity release plan could be as much as £3000.

If you opt for a lifetime mortgage there is a real risk that when the time comes for your home to be sold the amount owed may be more than you borrowed because of the compound interest charged on the mortgage, unless you can pay off some of the debt as you go along. So, if you want to leave a decent inheritance for your family you need to act with caution.

Be aware that if you have a substantial amount of cash in the bank this could affect any means-tested benefits you may be entitled to. The upper threshold is currently £16,000 so above this you are ineligible for means-tested benefits. Your tax situation could be impacted.

If you choose to pay off the whole of the lifetime mortgage early you could incur penalties.

Risks of Home Reversion Scheme

You may only receive between 30-60% of the market value of your home and there may be a clause in your contract which forbids you from moving home. Distressingly, once you die the property usually has to be vacated within one month which causes unnecessary upset to the family at a distressing time.

Protections from the Equity Release Council

You should look for an equity release provider who is a member of the Equity Release Council to ensure that any lifetime mortgage you take out will never exceed the total value of your property. You are also assured that:

You can remain in your home until the end of the mortgage term
You are provided with an independent solicitor who explains everything clearly to you
Interest rates must be fixed or capped and the product must have a ‘no negative equity guarantee’.

Always get the best independent adviser who is regulated by the FCA and discuss things with your family before signing on the dotted line.

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How To Easily Sell Your Life Insurance Policy

Signing up for life insurance is usually a great idea. It financially shields your spouse and children in the event of your untimely demise. Also, it’s a win-win situation, at least on most occasions. Your loved ones are financially secure, and you can rest easy knowing they’ll be fine even if you’re not there. That said, as time progresses and you inevitably age, priorities might shift. You may feel like you don’t want to keep paying for a life insurance policy. For instance, your kids may have finished their education, secured good jobs, and are living pretty stable lives. Or you may find yourself in the middle of an emergency and are simply strapped for cash. Whatever the case, selling your policy is usually better than resigning yourself. It denotes the value the insurer wants to compensate you. With a life settlement, the term used for selling life insurance – you can secure a much bigger payment. But how do you go about it? Here are the general steps to selling a life insurance policy. Tips To Sell Your Life Insurance Policy Easily As always, selling a life insurance policy has always been a challenge. But with some of the core strategies, you can get the best deal by selling your life insurance. So let us discuss some of the most important tips through which you can manage it here. 1. Find A Good Life Settlement Company The first step to setting the ball rolling is selecting your buyer. Now, usually, there are three ways to sell your life insurance. The first is to an individual such as yourself. However, this isn’t only difficult to navigate but also makes you vulnerable to all kinds of bottlenecks. So, you only want to consider the other two. That is an asset management company or life settlement broker. An asset management company, or institutional investor, is a large company that specializes in life settlement investment. So, you essentially sell your policy to them. A broker, as the name suggests, helps you find an investor, usually an institutional investor, to buy your policy. And they act as an intermediary, negotiating the deal. That said, if you are looking for a good buyer, visit this site. 2. The Life Settlement Company Must Be licensed The company that buys your life insurance policies is called the life settlement. It must be licensed with the different state departments of Insurance. It will help you avoid any kind of scams. Talk to them and verify their licenses. It must be one of the important steps to sell your insurance coverage. 3. Submit All the Necessary Documents & Information Once you have found your buyer, either directly or through a broker, the next step is to submit all the required documentation. These include your policy documents and medical records. Now, in the majority of cases, you don’t need to submit your policy-related documents yourself. Rather, you provide authorization to the company you are selling to so that they can get them from your insurance provider. With everything in order, the underwriting process begins. It is at this stage that your life expectancy, as well as the value of your policy, are estimated. 4. Choose The Best Offer The next step is the offer negotiation. Basically, the interested buyer, or buyers, submit their offer to you, and you decide whether it is good enough for you. In many cases, the broker will present the best offers only. Depending on what you are looking for, you can go with the offer presented, or you can forfeit it. That said, life settlements are typically more than the surrender value, which means you will get more money selling your policy to a third party than resigning to what your insurance is ready to pay. 4. Price Based On Policy Value In general, life settlement companies are mainly interested in high-value policies rather than older ones. Ensure that you have at least a $100,000 life insurance policy. Also, the settlement companies pay you more if you have some health condition leading to a low life expectancy. This kind of policy status earns more if you are selling it to them. 5. Receive Your Lump Sum Payment Finally, you sign over your policy to the buyer and, in exchange, get the agreed amount as payment. This payment is paid in full, in one lump sum. Once this step is done, you are no longer responsible for premium payments. And when you die, the buyer collects the death benefits. 6. Finding The Reputable Brokers When trying to find the right broker, you must look out for the most reputable brokers. The best process is to talk with not one but multiple brokers. Not only this, but you must also look for multiple brokers with multiple offers. Looking for the best quote can only help you get the best offers on sales of your insurance. Reputable Brokers offer you what they have to offer, and nothing is mesmerizing. Hence, play safe and do not run after the offers. How Much Will I Get from Selling My Life Insurance Policy? The lump sum cash you get from selling your life insurance policy in a life settlement will be a lot higher than its face value, often four or more times the cash surrender value of your policy. Even so, the precise among typically depends on several factors, including: Your insurance policy’s premiums Death benefits Life expectancy Therefore, the life settlement company will consider all these to determine your specific payout. Want To Sell A Life Insurance Policy? Seek Advice From A Reputable Life Settlements Company The last thing you want is to sell a life insurance policy you have been paying premiums for over a long time for an unfair price in the market. For this reason, you need to find a good life settlement buyer for your policy. Besides advising on your settlement, a life settlement company will help you sell it for a competitive price. Read Also: How to Get Low-Cost Life Insurance for Seniors Some Kinds of Death are Not Covered by Term Life Insurance How Private Hire Insurance Takes You Out from Problems?

Use Online Event Payment To Streamline Your Payment Process

The use of an online event payment solution simplifies the entirety of an event's financial administration as well as the processing of payments. It makes safe transactions easier to complete and is compatible with a variety of payment gateways, including PayPal, credit cards, Authorize.Net, and others. The hassle of manually managing cash may be eliminated with the aid of payment solutions based on the web. Mistake Payment Administration Your attendees will have the ability to make payments and donations at any time of day or night thanks to the online payment management system. A system that is PCI-compliant will simplify the process of receiving payments, balancing transactions, managing refunds, addressing chargebacks, and maintaining merchant accounts. Adaptability In Making Use Of Merchant Accounts Event planners have the option of utilizing their merchant accounts when they use web-based payment management services instead of managing payments themselves. This account does not cost anything to set up, and it enables you to handle payments made by card as well as those made online. In addition, the payments for the registration are supposed to be sent straight to your bank account with a single click of the mouse. An Exposition Of The Model Of The Payment Facilitator The concept of a payfac was developed to facilitate the simplification of the process by which businesses accept electronic payments. Merchants that wished to accept credit card transactions were formerly required to open an account with a merchant acquirer, which may be a bank or a company that was sponsored by a bank. Is It Possible For Us To Become Into A Payment Processor? It's not easy, but it's worth it to work toward being a payment facilitator. The majority of current adopters of the payment facilitator model are software businesses that have built-in payment processing capabilities. For this reason, businesses with established e-commerce, point-of-sale (POS), invoicing, and billing operations are making the switch to empower their client experience, increase their control over that experience, and boost their bottom line. How To Get Started As A Payment Processor Figure it out Calculating the potential return on investment is crucial before giving any serious consideration. The payment facilitator model has the potential to increase your software's earnings with each processed transaction, but it will cost you both money and effort to implement. The value of an undertaking may be gauged via a return on investment study. Guidelines And Regulations Are Crucial. Making money off of customers' purchases is only part of being a payment processor. However, when underwriting sub-merchants, there are certain policies and processes that must be followed. The industry and nation in which your sub-merchants operate, their risk tolerance, and the size of your business are all variables you may use as a facilitator to tailor your approach. But, you must establish criteria for at least the following five areas: Doing Thorough Website Research; Knowledge of Customers' and Vendors' Data Collection and Analysis. Adjusting to new methods of doing business; Managing transitions in ownership; Doing application reviews manually. Moreover, risk and fraud protection mechanisms must be implemented, and they must work seamlessly within the payment facilitator's verticals. The Payments Industry's Backbone If you've gotten this far in your quest to become a payment facilitator, you'll soon reach a crossroads. However, in this crucial stage, you must choose between developing your own infrastructure from the ground up or integrating another party's in order to onboard and serve your sub-merchants. Putting Pen To Paper On A Sponsorship Deal Applying to a sponsor, which includes an acquiring bank and a processor, is the next step after establishing the necessary processes and locating the appropriate infrastructure. When that is finalized, a PAYFAC ID (PFID) will be issued to you, allowing you to move forward with underwriting, onboarding, and servicing. Closing Thoughts Businesses soon realized that being payment facilitators allowed them to provide a more streamlined onboarding process for their clients, maintain a greater degree of control over the payments experience, and considerably boost the amount of income generated from payments. However, in recent years, this has increased the number of PAYFAC operating in a wide variety of business sectors and market verticals. Read Also: Why Would I Need A Business Credit Report? 5 Tactics to Improve Your Credit Score This Year How to Deal With Debt By Doing Business Marketing Smartly?

Canada Is the First Country to Allow Trading BTC on Its Stock Exchanges

Bitcoin has officially been introduced at the traditional stock exchange. The first country to make this significant move was Canada. Before that, the only way to buy and sell BTC was by using a digital currency stock exchange, which is still the most popular way to trade Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. The Great White North officials authorized a Bitcoin fund that was immediately introduced to the stock market. This event will pave the way for many investors to access the popular cryptocurrency and try to make a profit with its help. The Bitcoin index fund was proposed by a company called Purpose Investments. The Toronto Stock Exchange approved the start of the fund on February 18. As announced by the spokesperson from the Ontario Securities Commission, the fund uses the acronym BTCC. The role of the fund’s administrator belongs to a Canadian company called CIBC Mellon Global Securities Company. The sub-custodian is the Gemini Trust Company. There are no similar traded Bitcoin funds anywhere in the world. It means that Canadian stock traders could start a trend where many other stock exchanges will introduce a cryptocurrency-backed fund. Purpose Investments issued an official press release declaring that the fund was the first in the world to be physically settled in BTC and not derivatives. It means investors will access cryptocurrencies conveniently without self-custody risks and all associated dangers that digital cryptocurrency wallets bring. The main risk brought by digital wallets is the usage of keys. A private key is the only thing that allows you access to your cryptocurrencies. This key is like a password, but it’s irretrievable, meaning your Bitcoin storage will be lost forever if you forget the key. For instance, if you lose your Facebook password, you can always send a request to change it. The platform, being a centralized entity, will grant you that request. Unfortunately, that option isn’t available when it comes to digital wallets, meaning a lost key is gone forever. Many people don’t feel confident about this arrangement and believe handling your own keys brings a certain risk. That is why an exchange-traded fund seems like a better option at the moment. In other words, being in charge of your own fortune requires having a high level of responsibility and keeping your private keys safe and secure. Bitcoin Reaches New Heights: When Bitcoin was introduced to the world in 2009, it was worth almost nothing. You could buy hundreds of Bitcoins for a couple of dollars. The first time that the cryptocurrency peaked was in December 2017, when the price reached almost $20K. After that, the price started going down, with many pessimists predicting the ultimate fall of BTC. However, there was no reason to worry. After a somewhat quiet period in 2018, when the BTC rate reached as low as $3,500, a slight bump happened when the price increased to more than $10k in 2019. Then, the Covid-19 pandemic started, and people started looking for a way to store their wealth. At that moment, Bitcoin turned out to be one of the most lucrative solutions. Therefore, they joined a stock exchange cryptocurrency and started massively buying BTC. The price first reached around $30K, and it is currently being traded at about $45K. This was a reason good enough for many people to consider buying “digital gold.” Another reason why this cryptocurrency increased in value was the fact that big companies started investing in it heavily. For example, Tesla invested approximately $1.5 billion in bitcoin, and many smaller investors followed its steps. What About Other Cryptocurrencies? So far, Bitcoin has been the most popular cryptocurrency, traveling the longest distance on the road to widespread adoption. However, it’s definitely not the only crypto out there, as many other altcoins are pretenders to BTC’s trone. Some of them might even get a similar treatment by traditional stock exchanges. The most likely candidate for that is Ethereum, a cryptocurrency supporting the Ethereum platform. Besides Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash is doing a pretty good job, as well as Tether, Binance Coin, Ripple, Litecoin, and more. Final Thoughts: The introduction of Bitcoin to the traditional stock exchange gives Canadian investors more room to access the cryptocurrency. They’ll be the first ones to test how that works and whether one can make a profit by investing in the Bitcoin ETF. If all goes well, we could expect other exchanges to do the same. All eyes are now on the Wall Street exchange, which is expected to copy the homework from the Canadian stock exchange. Will there be additional Bitcoin funds used by investors to trade on stock exchanges around the globe? At this moment, everything seems possible. Read Also: Exciting Facts About Cryptocurrency And Crypto Wallets How to Buy Bitcoin From Norway HybridBlock: Why Binance Is Investing In Crypto-Fiat Trading Everything You Must Know About Bitcoin Circuit: Legal or Scam

Should You Consider Equity Release To Pay For Live-in Care?

What is Equity Release and How Does it Work?

Points to Consider

Benefits of Equity Release

Risks and Pitfalls of Equity Release

Risks of Home Reversion Scheme

Protections from the Equity Release Council

Why Would I Need A Business Credit Report?

Did You Know NOT ALL DEATH are Covered by Term Life Insurance?

Content Rally

Content Rally wrapped around an online publication where you can publish your own intellectuals. It is a publishing platform designed to make great stories by content creators. This is your era, your place to be online. So come forward share your views, thoughts and ideas via Content Rally.

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How To Easily Sell Your Life Insurance Policy

Use Online Event Payment To Streamline Your Payment Process

Canada Is the First Country to Allow Trading BTC on Its Stock Exchanges

Should You Consider Equity Release To Pay For Live-in Care?

What is Equity Release and How Does it Work?

Points to Consider

Benefits of Equity Release

Risks and Pitfalls of Equity Release

Risks of Home Reversion Scheme

Protections from the Equity Release Council

Share this Article

Why Would I Need A Business Credit Report?

Did You Know NOT ALL DEATH are Covered by Term Life Insurance?

Content Rally wrapped around an online publication where you can publish your own intellectuals. It is a publishing platform designed to make great stories by content creators. This is your era, your place to be online. So come forward share your views, thoughts and ideas via Content Rally.

Leave a Reply

Popular

Follow Us

Recent

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